


No Brighter Sun

by InkPress



Category: Pocket Monsters | Pokemon - All Media Types
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 12:38:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8056720
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/InkPress/pseuds/InkPress
Summary: Ash loves Serena. Serena loves someone else. When Serena's childhood love leaves for Saffron City, Ash spends the next eight years offering his shoulder to cry on. But as Ash realizes he can't settle for friendship, Serena's love returns to Pallet Town, bringing the end of the world with him.





	No Brighter Sun

**_No Brighter Sun_**  

. 

. 

. 

_Youth_  

**Ash,** **Gradeschool**  

I know the names of the bodies in the dirt. 

Johnny with his baby cheeks slumps whimpering over the see-saw; Chester, squirrely-faced, cries from the inside of a bush; some dozen others lie breathing dirt in the schoolyard. They're the guy half of Ms. Gardner’s sixth grade class, moaning tangled in monkey bars and swing-set chains, lips cut open and faces bruised.  

The boy left standing looks just the way he did the first race of the school year: the silent, Saffron school transfer watching alone on the finish line in his prep school blazer as Gary and I and all the losers sprinted in after. One smear of red in a sea of dusty colors; every kid in school asked his name that day, and every kid in school got the same answer.  

No. 

So, we called him Red.  

One of the bodies at Red's feet coughs. Big Mikey Miller, two years our senior, who won all the races before Red and who still fills the girls’ bags with crayfish: Big Mikey mumbles something that sounds like 'Help' with his face smashed under Red's patent leather shoe.   

Red, frowning, crashes his heel into Mikey's jaw and the mumbling subsides to a whimper.  

The jangling of the chain-link is all Gary leaves behind as he dashes past me for the schoolyard. 

The boy turns as Gary tackles him and they go tumbling to the ground, grunting and snarling. Red comes out on top, Gary thrashing viciously but held fast to the blacktop, the boy's fist hammering into Gary's face and spray-painting their clothes crimson.  

I glance at the empty street. At the way home. 

Because Mom had said not to get in trouble. That she'd called in a favor. That maybe, just maybe, I'd get to go to a middle school in Saffron, one with teachers that teach and heating that works and textbooks that don't fall apart at the seams.  

But the dull sound of flesh pounding flesh snaps my head back to Gary, and I kick my legs loose fast enough to grab the boy's arm before he can crack my only friend's skull open on the pavement.  

Red looks at me, eyes narrowing. Then he smashes his other fist off my teeth.  

Ears ringing, I whip backward tasting iron. I shove the boy back, screaming something without words. 

He stumbles over Gary, red trickling from his knuckles. He catches himself and meets my glare, fingers curling, uncurling; curling again. 

Then- 

_“_ _Don_ _’_ _t!_ _”_  

A blond girl sprints between us from behind the school steps, white sundress fluttering around her thighs. She brandishes a dead branch at me and yells, "I'll hit you! I _will_!" 

I know _her_ name too - Serena Vonne, the smallest girl in school, who's never raised her voice at anyone. Not all last year, when she couldn't afford one of those new dolls from the city and the other girls wouldn't play with her - not all of summer camp, when Mikey and the boys hid dead birds and crayfish in her backpack because secretly they were in love with her. She cried nearly every day then, bawling until late in the afternoon when Red came and lead her through fields choked with weeds showing her how to plant doomed sunflowers and daffodils.  

And I watched, every afternoon, hidden away behind some tree or bush while Serena wiped her eyes and smiled for the boy called Red. 

She sniffles now, and the dead branch wavers. But when she turns to Red she pulls on a brave face, wiping her eyes with a clumsy fist. Eyes clear, she turns to me and says, in a voice quivering harder than her hands, "I _will_ hit you." 

Gary groans beside me and my swollen lip throbs - but one look at Serena drops my fists to my sides. 

She keeps the branch trained on me until Gary stirs, and she whips the tip at his mess of brown hair.  

Gary, grunting, gets up on knees. Then less surely to his feet. He's heaving like he wants to vomit but trying hard to make his face snarl. 

"You're dead," he says, spitting blood. 

The boy smirks, spreading two hands in welcome. "So kill me," he says. 

"NO!" Serena dashes in front of him, flailing her skinny arms. "Stop it!" she screams. "I _wanted_ him to!" Her floundering snaps the dead wood in two but she goes on flailing, glaring at me.  

The first morning Serena came to school with her mom instead of her dad, she levelled me with the same glare because I asked her why.  

She told me it was because she hated him. Hated him enough to die. 

I dropped it, then. 

"I _wanted_ him to do it," she says, face glistening with sweat as she lies. She jabs the end of the stick at me. She says, "It's _my_ fault!" 

-And I drop it now. I turn to Gary and say, "Let's go." 

But Gary's seething, scraping at the blood on his chin. "You go," he says. "I'm going to  _murder him."_  

I step toward him, reaching for his arm, but Gary shoves past me and Serena. He throws a wide swing at Red but the haymaker whiffs, his fist floundering to the side, and Red cuts him straight across the jaw. 

Gary smacks the dirt. 

And Red turns to me. 

I've never noticed how similar we look - the same wiry build, the same dark hair. Except he's got Gary's blood smeared across his white sleeve. Except he's got Serena clutching like a lover at his arm. 

Serena's never held my arm that way. Gary's never lost to me at anything.  

Something's tight in my chest, something hot and thorned clenching my fingers into fists - but I look at Serena's face, her eyes bright as she stares at Red, and the constriction melts to a simmering ache.  

I uncurl my fingers and hold up my hands.  

Red says, "You're a coward." 

I choke down my retort, kneeling by Gary crumpled on the ground and slinging his arm over my shoulder.  

Red watches me stagger past. He takes Serena's hand and says, "It's the girl, isn't it?"  

I grit my teeth. I say to Red, "You're an ass." And I say to Serena, "I don't get how you don't see it." 

Serena frowns at me, opening her mouth to speak-  

-but Red clasps her shoulder. He says, "You really _don't_ know." 

I heft Gary up against my waist, glaring into Red's dark eyes. 

"If you hate it so much," I spit back. "Why are you _here?"_  

Serena whispers something but Red pulls from her, his eyes flashing. He says, his voice barbed, "Ask your mother." 

"What's that supposed-" 

"-You never asked, did you?" His lip curls, half-taunting and half-pity. "You've got _his_ eyes you know. Didn't you ever wonder why she moved you out of the city? Aren't you curious who she called for that _favor?_ " 

I clench my jaw, digging my fingers into Gary's shirt. 

" _Don't_ talk about my-" 

"-No. You'll hear this, Ketchum." He closes on me, the smell of his blood thickening. "Because I _hate_ this town," he says. "I hate the insects, I hate the dirt roads, I hate the insecure little _bullies."_ He spits at Mikey inching toward the rundown school building. "I hate this school, I hate these teachers. I hate the fucking _one_ movie theatre and the _one_ movie it plays. But I hate _you_ most." He grabs my collar and drags me close. "You, and the _whore_ that made you." 

The deep of his eyes glimmer scarlet in the light dying as he dares me to reply. 

I smash him across the face, snapping his head to one side, something sharp tearing through the skin of my left hand. Ignoring the sting coursing up my arm I scream, "Then _leave!"_  

Red whips back toward me, lancing his fist into my stomach. As I double-over retching he cracks his knee into my nose and sends me reeling past Serena. 

The world's colors blur together. I try to brush the fingers of Serena's hand and find I can't quite reach... 

She steps away from me, toward Red in the distance. He grows larger and larger - then stops, Serena catching him by the arm. He looks at her and she tells him, "Please." 

Red turns his head back to me, wiping blood from his lip. He kneels beside me, close enough to stab me. 

"Tell Delia for me," he says. "Tell her that I _know._ " 

He takes Serena's hand and pulls her away. At the threshold to the road he calls back to me, "And if she loves you at all, she'll tell you the truth." 

The next morning Principal Lawson announces over the PA that Red's left Pallet for good, and Serena trembles in the seat by the window holding her number two pencil like a sword. 

Gary avoids her, settling into the furthest corner of the classroom. I hover halfway between them until Big Mikey limps in with half his face swollen up like a balloon.  

He goes straight for her. 

I follow after with my teeth clenched. 

Her neck set determinedly in the direction of the window, Serena refuses to look at us. Big Mikey just marches up to her, slamming his hands down on Serena's desk with a face full of expectation.  

Serena flushes scarlet, her chest going up-down in big, anxious breaths. Just as Big Mikey opens his mouth to speak Serena yells, "Fuck off!" 

She's young enough to think it's big to say fuck off. Maybe it is, because I turn right around and skulk back over to Gary. 

But Mikey lingers, expression pained.  He puts his hand on Serena's shoulder and says, "Hey," the effort of this gesture shining on his face. 

At Mikey's touch Serena leaps from her chair, splintering her pencil against her desk. Mikey's hand falls from her shoulder and she screams, "You ruined _everything!"_   

And Mikey watches with a lopsided smile as Serena shoves him, sending all his considerable bulk tumbling into the desk behind him. He lies there with his arm on the toppled desk and everyone staring: staring at the biggest kid in school looking up at the smallest, at Big Mikey picking himself up and waddling out the door muttering, "Sorry." 

Serena sits down facing the window again, red-faced and trying not to cry. 

All day I watch her watch nothing. All year, Serena talks to no one. 

. 

. 

. 

**Ash, Middle School**  

I sprint searching for her past pyramids and coffins, skeletons and sculptures, modern walls hung with stone spears and swords pounded from bronze. I turn into the Art section where the walls aren't seen at all, hidden behind landscape paintings reaching floor to ceiling. Here I find her in the far corner of the room, wandering the tiled floor in her white canvas shoes.  

Serena sees me coming and settles in place crossing her arms. She says, "I'm not going back." 

She's got that look. It comes with all the Valentines and free gum and love letters, from always sitting at the crowded table at lunch 'cause someone's always saved her seat. And maybe there's just a little thrift store pride in it too, the way she wears her second-hand hoodie like couture.  

"I figured you'd follow me," she says. She turns on her heel and makes for the pokemon exhibits, for the big charizard skeleton from the museum brochures with its teeth and wings and all. Over her shoulder she says, "But you can't make me go back." 

"I'm  _asking_  you to." I talk at her back, walking brisk to keep up with the legs she got last summer. They're long and skinny like the rest of her, and Serena stands whole centimeters now over everyone else in the sixth grade. "Mr. Drummond-" 

"-If you're scared of getting in trouble," she says. "Just say you couldn't find me." 

"I'm not scared!" 

She stops in front of the charizard and touches the bronze plaque. She says, "Then what?" 

"Even if you go out there-" 

She walks away from me, picking a hallway at random.  

I chase after her, saying, "Even if you go, it's not like you'll see him." 

Now she parks in front of a dragonite fossil and runs her hand over the signage:  _Donated by the Alden Foundation_. "What," she says. "You wanna save me the heartache?"  

I look at the fossil. I tell Serena, "Yeah. I do." 

She wraps her arms around herself. She says, softly, "Maybe I just wanna look." 

"-And if you get lost?" I flounder my hands. "Hit by a car?" 

She walks away from me again, saying over her shoulder, "Would you cry?" 

I stumble after her, nearly colliding with a lanky high-schooler checking her face in a compact.  

"Uh-" 

"You didn't," she says. She sits down in a wooden bench and stretches. "You didn't cry when he left." 

I lean against the wall beside. I say, "I didn't know him." 

"Well I did." She kicks her legs up and down, putting her head back to stare at the fluorescent ceiling. She says, "It seems sappy now. But I was going to tell him, the day he left.” 

I sit down beside her, massaging my thighs. "Why didn't you?" 

"You _know_ why," she says, temper flickering across her face. But the anger cools quickly and her face softens. "What'd he mean back then, anyway? What he said about your mom..." 

She remembers?  

I stare at a her moment - then catch myself. 

Because of course she remembers. Serena would never forget the day Red left Pallet. 

I pound my fist into my thigh.  I tell her, "He was trying to make me mad." 

"-He wouldn't," says Serena. Her face remains pleasant - she says this as if stating fact. "He wouldn't talk about someone's parents like that. Not without-" 

"You're still taking his side?" I curl away from her, bouncing my heel against the tiled floor. "He's gone, you know." 

Her temper flickers again, rippling across her brow. But her voice comes even as she says, "You and him and me. We're all the same." 

I frown at her. "I _stayed_. " 

She tilts her head to her swinging feet and shakes it, sighing. "You know what I'm talking about." 

"Not really." I glance at the watch on my wrist – nine thirty-eight, a half hour past meet-up. I shrug to myself, finding it doesn't bother me as much as it should. "I dunno anything about the guy," I say, rubbing the scar on my knuckle. "I don't even know why he came to Pallet... He obviously hated it." 

Serena looks at me curiously. "You think you're so different." 

"I _am."_  

She shakes her head, straightening out her legs. "On the bus last night, when we first saw the city." She taps a heel against the tile. "What'd you say?" 

"I said I was hungry." 

"-You said it was beautiful." She stares me in the eyes, something in her look pleading. "And that you hated it." 

All the lights, the couples intertwined, the black and white pulse - the city I might've known. The city my mother loved long ago. 

I stare back at Serena. I tell her, "'Cause it's what Mom left behind." 

Serena turns down one corner of her mouth – some sort of pout. She looks away from me. "Red said the same thing." She drums her fingers on the bench. "Said the city at night is the most beautiful thing." 

Then she's standing, staring at the ceiling again, shouting to the lights, "And he hated it! _Hated it._ You know why?" 

I flop my shoulders. "'Cause he thought the crappy air would give him cancer?"  

She whirls to look at me, gold hair settling around her shoulders.  

She says, "Because it’s the last thing his mom saw before she jumped." 

. 

. 

. 

I follow Serena flipping her hair side-to-side as she walks down the museum hall, passing centuries old artwork without so much as a glance. She says back at me over her shoulder, "He mentioned this place once. Said it’s the exact center of the city." 

I nod, studying her thin back. "You can see everything from here." 

She pauses, looking back to me. She says, "You've been here before?" 

"Just once." 

She turns and leans toward me, hands clasped behind her back. She walks backwards as she says, "So you know the way out then!" She straightens, thrusting out her hand. “Show me.” 

"We're going to see the city anyway," I say. 

"We're going to see the  _bus station_. I wanna see what  _he_  sees." 

I stop in the middle of the hall. I shake my head, clenching my teeth together. 

"You don't need him." 

She stops too, taking a step toward me. She snatches my hand from my side and puts her face to mine, her skin warm and her hair smelling of oranges.  

She says, "I just wanna see." 

I can't look at her face so I look at her shoes. Bright white like they're brand-new, but I know it's the bleach 'cause I got mine from the same dinky charity shop for five bucks and a little haggling.  

She squeezes my hand. She says, "Please." 

And I know the look on her face will break my heart. So I say to the shoes, “Okay.” 

We pass the charizard and dragonite and dozens more, all big and beautiful and dead. You don't get the same feeling with library books, the sense of scale. I walk a little slower, stealing glances at a world long past but Serena nudges me along. 

She stops when we get to the stairs. She crosses her arms and looks at me like I'm conning her. 

"Why are we going up?" 

I start climbing. "Up or back. You pick." 

One step. Two. I hear nothing and start to sweat. 

But on the fifth step up I hear her pattering behind me and I grin knowing she can't see.  

As we climb, Serena mumbles a steady stream of complaints about Pallet, about school, about the portly Mr. Drummond... 

Then we reach the top and she falls silent. 

I flourish toward the window like a magician, saying, "Saffron City." 

Serena runs to the wall and presses up against the glass. She looks on at the concrete spires, the fashion billboards, the tiny strangers scurrying countless in the streets, crowded around the five-car pile-up outside the Silph Building. Then she puts her head to the window and cries. 

Most everyone turns ugly when they cry. And Serena does too. She bawls with her face still pressed to the glass, her eyes going red and her nose streaming. 

I clench my fingers around the rail of the stairway. There's no way to look away. Neither of us can afford it. 

On the ride home, Mr. Drummond seats us apart at the front of the bus. He stands between us in the aisle and lectures about safety and responsibility. He gives us both detention for a week. 

I tell him it was my idea, so he gives me a month. Serena tells him he's getting fatter, so he gives her a month too. 

Saffron recedes from view behind us. When it's gone completely Serena shifts in her seat and slides closer to me, just enough that the orange of her shampoo wafts across the aisle. 

She says around Mr. Drummond's pant leg, "Hey." 

"Yeah?" 

She hands me a wristband, red and glittering with the words Saffron City Museum in gold. She says, "Thanks. For showing me." 

I snap the band around my wrist, grinning. "There's way cooler stuff in the museum," I tell her, rubbing the gold letters. "I'll show you next time, if you want?" 

"Next time?"  

She smiles, Saffron still in her eyes. 

"Hey," she says. "I bet I'll see him next time, don't you think?" 

I nod, the grin sliding from my face. I could cry, maybe, but that'd come off badly. So I nod, all the way back to Pallet. 

. 

. 

. 

**Ash, High School**  

Pallet High's track circuit coughs dust behind fourteen teenagers chirping lap numbers into the morning chill. This is the entire girls' basketball team minus one, the one being Serena stripping off her sweater, throwing it beside me on the bleachers, flashing Gary her fakest smile. 

"We've got five minutes," she says, wiping sweat off her neck.  

I cringe, pre-emptively. I tell her, "I can't go." 

She drops the smile. Hands go to hips go to hair, her long blond stress-reliever. "Dr. Oak had you all week," she says, twirling gold around her fingers. "What's so important you can't take a weekend?" 

The girls make kissy faces as they run by. Gary returns a salvo of obscenities, making lewd thrusting motions at them from the bottom of the bleachers until Serena kicks him in the leg. 

"Look," Gary says, rubbing his shin. "You don't get to drag him to a _museum_ for the weekend unless you're screwing him. Which you're not." 

"You're a pig," she says. "And _you_ promised," she says to me. She puts on the puppy-eyes, big blue pools of sad. "We've been planning this for _months_."  

Eight years I've kept every promise I've made her. But today- today I sail the uncharted; today I look away from her, saying, "I'm really sorry." 

"Don't apologize," says Gary, limping to the edge of the track. "She'll be thanking you in a week." 

He puts his toes on the white chalk. As the girls come around Gary swats at the frontrunner's ass, whistling loudly as they pass. 

Serena swivels back around to me from Gary, her hands back in her hair. She stretches with her elbows to the air, her body long and toned, her eyes flashing lightning. "What's he talking about?" she asks.  

"It's a work thing," I say, straightening out my chest. "It's a- corporate secret." 

She motions to her sports bag, a possessive flick of the wrist. She asks, "Since when's the professor's work secret?" She frowns. "Or _corporate_?" 

I hand her a bottle filled with something neon. "It's just for a couple days," I say. "I'll tell you after, okay?" 

She swigs the drink and chucks the bottle at Gary's head. She studies me a while, head tilted to one side, processing what must be a rare occurrence for her. She says, finally, "Alright," and punches me in the shoulder.  

"You're still going to the dance, right?" she says. "You worked so hard organizing it."  

I wince, rubbing where she hit me. "I guess. Are you-?" 

"-I _live_ for school dances." She pulls her hair over her shoulder, grinning. "All the well-supervised grinding really does it for me," she says. 

I smirk, and Serena beams. She steps closer to me and fixes my cap saying, "Don't work too hard." 

This close I can see the glitter on her lips, hear the faint in and out of her breathing; smell the faint stab of alcohol on her breath. I search her face, but finding nothing, tell her, "I won't." 

She looks at me curiously before she sprints away, calling back to me over her shoulder, "Then I'll see you at the dance!" 

Gary comes back to the bleachers rubbing his temple, Serena sticking her tongue out at him as she passes by.  

"She's not worth it,” he says, tossing me her bottle. 

But even Gary wouldn't have turned her down.  

He sits down beside me as I look over the bottle, watching me snap its cap open. I suck on the plastic nozzle, orange and the sharp taste of vodka flooding my tongue as I watch Serena gain on the other runners.  

I turn to Gary and ask, "Does she seem...weird to you?" 

Gary snorts, leaning back on his hands. "She's always weird," he says. 

"I mean...different. Doesn't she-" 

"What." He snaps back forward, his face almost serious. "You think she knows?" 

I shake my head, closing the cap on the bottle and pushing it deep into Serena's bag. I say, "No, it's something else. I'm sure she doesn't know yet." 

"And you're not gonna tell her?" 

"I dunno." I zip the bag and adjust my cap. "What about you? You gonna take Dr. Oak's offer?" 

Gary snorts again, pulling a sour face. "I've got my priorities straight," he says. "Paleontology's all yours." 

He jerks his chin at the frontrunner, now second-place behind Serena. "HEY MELODY," he shouts. "WANNA SEE A MOVIE TOMORROW?" 

Melody turns and gives him the finger. 

The next day I'm listening to Melody and Gary make grunting noises under the bleachers. Serena's running wind-sprints alone on the orange track so the grunting's all I've got for company. 

Some freshmen walk by, dangerously close to where Gary tossed his pants. I grin at the pack awkwardly, stomping on the bleachers to let Gary know. 

He just gets louder.  

One of the group breaks away and comes suddenly up the steps, a blond twig of a girl with nearly pretty brown eyes. She climbs up about halfway looking very conscious about the placement of her feet before she asks up at me, “What’s that sound?” 

I stomp the bleachers again. "Nothing. Raccoons, I guess?" 

Melody moans, high-pitched and heated.  

The girl frowns at me and tries to get a look under the seats. 

"Alright, hey," I say, grabbing her wrist. "Did you...uh, do you need something?" 

"Um." She looks down at her hand joined to mine. "I just wanted to talk to you." 

The laminate ID hanging around her neck reads 'Melina Grove _'._  The newspaper club wears these like letterman jackets. 

I stand and pull the girl to my level, putting my arm around her shoulders as Serena glances our way.  

"Right. You're from the newspaper." 

Melina smiles at me, nodding. "The _Eagle's_ newest reporter. I'm Melina." 

"And you're here to cover the dance," I say. Serena turns away from us, launching into a new set of sprints, so I take my arm off Melina's shoulders and sit back down on the bleachers. "Sorry you got stuck with-" 

"-That's not why I'm here," says Melina.  

"-such a...what? You're not-" 

"I'm not here to cover the dance." She shakes her head. "I'm here to _ask you_ to the dance." 

I blink at her, shifting in my seat so our arms no longer touch.  

The grunting noises fill the lapse, and Melina laughs, half of the twinkling notes flat.  

"I imagined something more climatic," she says. 

"I'm really busy planning-" 

" _At_ the dance?" 

"'Cause the punch has to be-" 

"I think I deserve a straight rejection," she says. 

I try very hard not to look at Serena. I say, "I'm holding out for someone." 

The even line curves into a smile I can almost believe is genuine. 

 "I know,” says Melina. “You’re here every morning.” 

She sticks her tongue out at me and skips down the bleachers. She takes a good look at Gary between the seats on her way down before she joins her friends, laughing with exaggerated enthusiasm as she shouts up at me, “You better ask her!” 

As I watch her leave, Gary pops up at the bottom of the stairs fastening his belt. 

"The hell was that?" 

"Newspaper," I say, watching Serena turn my way from the track. "About the dance." 

"Oh, right." He sticks his head back under the bleachers and says, "Hey Melody, you wanna go to Homecoming?" 

. 

. 

. 

The next week, the punch is perfect. The trick is cherry sherbet mixed in right before serving so you're sure it's numbing cold. The trick is freezing whatever fruits you're using in whatever soda you're using in a big ring so no one's dealing with slices of lemon floating in their plastic cups. 

So says Serena, who's actually in charge of the punch. She checks it right before the lights go down and people start trickling in, puts the spoon to her mouth over a paper napkin so she won't stain her bright-white dress. She smacks her lips and nods her head. Then she dumps in a flask of what's probably vodka. 

"Don't tell anyone," she says, flashing her white teeth. She presses the flask to my chest. "And give this to Gary." 

She attaches to the gang of basketball players swaggering onto the hardwood. She high-fives the tallest, Big Mikey Miller who grew six inches last summer and put up the same number of points in last week's game off put-backs (where you stand under the basket and toss someone's missed shot back in). 

Mikey's talking about put-back number three, where he stood under the basket and tossed someone's missed shot back in, and I'm getting punched in the gut by a scrawny blond girl in a yellow dress wearing a yellower backpack who says, "Join the club." 

I take the hand in my gut and pump it up and down. "Hey Melina!" I say. 

"You're shouting, Ash." 

"Sorry!" I let go of her hand. "The music's loud!" 

She pulls me to the wall, smiling. She says, "Stop looking." 

From across the room Mikey's talking about put-back number one, where he stood under the basket and tossed someone's missed shot back in. 

"He's just going on and on about the put-backs," I say. 

"What else is a basketball center going to talk about?" says Melina. 

"I dunno. Literature?" 

"So talk to me about literature," she says. 

I shrug. "I don't read much...fiction." 

Melina smiles at me and takes a sip of her punch. She crinkles her nose as she swallows. 

"That's the vodka,” I say. 

Melina raises her cup to my face. "So I'll booze my way through rejection,” she says. 

"Please don't." 

Melina laughs. "I'm not cut out for alcoholism anyway," she says. She leads me to the punch bowl and hands me a red plastic cup. "But promise you'll keep me company." 

Serena by a bloom of balloons tied to the leg of a plastic table touches Big Mikey's bicep and laughs. 

I tell Melina, "I'm not going anywhere." 

Melina pours Serena's punch into my cup. She says, "So you like this girl-" 

"-It's complicated." 

"Divorced complicated or widowed complicated?" She smiles at me again, showing me her neatly spaced teeth. "You like her. She's pretty. She's _single_. What's the problem?" 

I throw back the punch, the strawberry chill cutting the edge off the alcohol. "Maybe that she's _pretty_ and _single."_  

"So you'd rather she be ugly and married?" 

I glance at Melina, who smiles behind her cup. I say, "It's just, she's friends with _everybody_ _._ " My hands pull at the frayed sleeve of my too-large jacket. "She's invited to every party - she does whatever with whoever and everyone loves her." 

Melina sips her punch. She says over the plastic rim, "And she's still lonely." 

"Well. I'm not the one who's gonna fix that." I smear my hair back, trying to manage the worst of the curling. I say, "You don't date Serena Vonne without being popular." 

Melina frowns. Then shrugs. "I said she's _lonely._ That doesn't have to equate to not having a boyfriend." 

"I thought you wanted me to- 

"-Ask her, yeah. Because you like her!" Melina flicks hair out of her face and makes an annoyed gesture with her head. "Plus, until you resolve the whole teenage angst facet of your relationship, you're not gonna be fixing anything." 

I shake my head. "Like getting shot down's gonna help with the _angst."_  

 "Ugh." Melina pretends to gag. "Look, if you think popularity's the issue, just _be popular."_  

"Uh huh. That's _hard to do_ when I've got one friend in the whole school and spend my weekends in a lab." 

"You could totally be popular." 

"Last Friday night I went to the library and read _Introduction to_ _Paleobiology_." I refill my punch and take another swig. "You know how many people have checked _Introduction to_ _Paleobiology_ out of the library?" 

"Three." 

"No, it's two. Me and-" 

"It's three, now." She unslings her backpack and pulls out a faded textbook, which she waves in my face. "So you're not the only one going to the library on a Friday." 

I take the book from her, examining the cover. 

"...You brought a textbook to Homecoming?" 

She snatches it back, repacking _Introduction to_ _Paleobiology_. She sets her backpack aside, saying, "Reading's a big hobby for me." 

I scowl. "The fact that we're both huge geeks doesn't help me." 

"What?" she says, laughing. "Come on, take some _pride_ in your geekhood. You have to be like, 'Hey you, I spent all last weekend reading about pokemon in a quiet library, but if you want I'll spend this weekend with you in a...less quiet...venue..." She frowns to herself. "So it's not the best pick-up line, but you get the point." 

I shake my head. "The point is no one- that _three_ people in this school think it's interesting." 

"Still," she says. She gives me half a smile. "It'll be better than Mikey's put-backs." 

Mikey across the room details put-back number two, where he stood under the basket and tossed his own missed shot back in. 

I drink again. 

"Hey," says Melina. "It's not like she's in love with him." 

Serena's bright dress flashes on the periphery of my vision. Cherry red punch sloshes from plastic cups to the too-fast Top 40 music, the mash of bodies in the center of the room spilling out to the corners, pulling back carrying Melina and me to the dance floor. 

Staring at me under the lights, she says, "I don't know why you wanna pretend nobody likes you. Guess that's your call. But _don't_ pretend it's not a choice." 

She presses close, looking up at me with her eyes melting. She says, "'Cause that girl over there? She turned down every sports star, every rock star, every single guy in school. Except you." 

She pushes me at Serena. She says something else, her face smiling, but the smile is sad and the words drown in the noise. 

So I'm glad that I don't hear her. 

I walk away from Melina through the tangle of bodies, progressing toward their white and gold center - Serena dancing with her hands in her hair.  

She takes drinks from smiling boys, shrugs easy, smiles easy, matching all their teenage heat with the advantage of her unmerited gifts.  

I approach playing the same damaged game, trading years of my life for this flushed moment of contact. My hand around her arm. Her blue eyes flashing. 

She asks, "You wanna drink?" 

I hold up my punch. "I have one." 

"Not what I'm talking about," she says. She shakes a half-empty water bottle, arm brushing against my neck. Her heat teases, her head tilted back to the lights as she drinks. She says, "It's vodka." 

I talk at her pretty white neck, "I have to tell you something." 

She sticks her tongue out at me. She pours vodka in my punch and smiles, all her white teeth shining.  

"Drink first." 

"Serena-" 

"Drink it! It's perfect, right? I made it, you know." 

"I'm not-" 

"Drink it!" 

She swings her arm - knocks my cup from my hand, sending its cherry contents gushing down her white side. 

"I'm so sor-" 

She leaves me, walking through the crowd as she drinks from her bottle and observes her dress bleeding soda and vodka and fruit mix and cherry sherbet. She holds into a plastic chair by the wall, and as I follow after she says, "Don't." 

All the years have changed nothing. 

But I tell her, "I'm really sorry." 

"I said don't." She shifts in her seat to look at the red splotch. She looks up at me and says, "What do you _want_?" 

I pull at the tie tight around my neck. "It's what I couldn't tell you before," I say. 

She takes a handful of napkins from the table beside her and dabs at the red on her dress. She says, "I'm really not interested in your work right now."  

"It's not the work," I say. "It's-" 

"-You know, you'd be a lot cooler if you quit with the pokemon stuff?" She gestures wildly with the napkins. "Go to a party once in a while," she says. "Maybe get wasted." 

"Serena-" 

"-Ash. There's _one_ person I want to see tonight." She drains the bottle in her hand and sets it rolling off the table. "Exactly one. And I don't get to see him, so can I at least have some fun? Please?" 

Serena, who went from loser to prom queen - Serena, who spent every moment of every day of every month of the last eight years yearning for the boy who left her behind like it was nothing.  

For all she's changed, Serena hasn't changed at all.  

I undo the tie and pull it from my neck. I swallow my own sad yearning and tell her, "That's what I want to talk to you about." 

She frowns at me, still dabbing at her dress. "Having fun?" she says. "You're not really-" 

"He's here." I pick her bottle off the floor and set it beside her on the table. "He came down from Saffron tonight." 

And then she stops dabbing. Stops breathing.  

Should I hope that all our years of heartache will buy her the moment she's wishing for? 

"Why didn't you tell me?" she asks. 

"I'm telling you now." 

She snaps to her feet. Her warm hands clasp mine and her hair smells like oranges. 

"Take me," she says. She looks at me, bleeding punch from her side, whispering, "Please." 

She's soft and sweet and so beautiful when she needs me. And because it's enough that _s_ _he'll be happy_ , I say, 

“Okay.”

****


End file.
